Eye-tracking, attention and amphetamine challenge

Abstract Smooth pursuit eye movement (SPEM) performance has been linked to nonvoluntary attentional processes. Amphetamine is a psychotropic drug with documented effects on attentional performance. In order to evaluate the relationship between SPEM performance and amphetamine's attentional effects, SPEM performance was measured prior to and following amphetamine administration in five bipolar patients and eight obsessive-compulsive patients. In these 13 patients, amphetamine did not significantly alter the accuracy of SPEM in the two patient groups. However, significant negative correlations were observed in the obsessive-compulsive patients and in the combined patient groups between baseline SPEM impairment and changes in eye-tracking accuracy following amphetamine, i.e. individuals with poorer SPEM accuracy improved while better SPEM performers deteriorated in tracking accuracy during amphetamine treatment.